By Rita McInerney

Mary Jenkins doesn't remember her earliest Christmases shortly after the turn of the century as a time of gift giving.

"We were very poor." There were 12 children. "We had nothing much," she recalls today. "But we had everything. We were a happy family."

The family lived on a farm her father worked in South Georgia. Their home was "an old fashioned country home." Her "Daddy" raised hogs, guinea hens and other fowl. He also worked for "white folk" who paid him in syrup made from the sweet fluid of sorghum grass common to the region.

She remembers one Christmas when two 8-gallon barrels of syrup were his wages. That meant candy making after the syrup boiled to the right consistency. Black walnuts and peanuts were added and the children pulled and plaited the spun candy. Then it was cut and set out on a big plate for family and friends to eat.

Her great-great grandchildren call her "Lady." Her husband and other relatives called her by that name. She came by it, she explains, because the census taker came to the farm the day she was born, June 4, 1900. When he heard the newborn cry he inquired and was told about the brand new infant girl by her father. So he put her down on the census form as "Lady."

"I was raised by white folk, Irish Yankees," she reveals. She guesses she was about five when her parents took her to an aunt in Detroit. This memory she doesn't talk about. Some years later an "Irish Yankee" family gave her a home. They treated her like one of their own.

The "Irish Yankees" had interests in sawmills, including one in Statesboro. When they traveled there, she went along and learned about racial prejudice.

She was about 12 when they stopped at Atlanta enroute to Statesboro. The family had reserved rooms at the famed Biltmore Hotel. When they got there, "they refused to let me go in. So my folks wouldn't stay there."

It made her "feel bad. I have a lot of heartaches."

But generally life with the white family was good. "The only time I knew I was black was when I looked in a mirror," she says today.

At 17 she married Joseph K. Jenkins and the couple moved to Savannah. Their home was right across from St. Benedict's Church. Their only child, Aaron Paul Jenkins, was born in 1918. No matter, his mother says, "I have children from here to the Virgin Islands."

The family came to Atlanta in the 1930s. Joseph Jenkins found a job at St. Joseph's Infirmary, worked there for about 40 years. Sister Stella Maris, RSM, the beloved sister there and later at St. Joseph's Hospital, became a good friend.

"I've been raising other people's children for 62 years. I always had five or six in my home while their parents worked. Some would give me one dollar, or two dollars, to keep them." Others couldn't pay. That made no difference to "Lady" Jenkins. "I know how to make a bowl of soup go around."

There were always kinfolk among the children she looked after. Her only son, who died in 1979, had 13 grandchildren. There were grandchildren of her brothers and sisters. "I can't count the number of 'greats.'"

Potted begonias bloom in her sunny kitchen window. In her stronger years she planted roses along the fence outside the corner apartment and thrift in the bed outside the kitchen. She's lived in the first-floor apartment near Our Lady of Lourdes Church about 30 years.

Great-great-granddaughter Lakisha Knight, 11, lives with her. Her brother, Mario Josey, 8, lives with his mother Maria in a unit at the other end of the building. Both children attend Lourdes School.

All three help "Lady" Jenkins. It's hard for her to get about, with bad knees and a foot that required surgery in September. She uses a cane, sometimes a walker.

Despite the toll of 90 years of busy living for others, she still likes Christmas traditions. Her pound cake and moist, sherry-laced fruitcakes are baked and ready for favorite friends, her pastor, Father Henry Gracz and a faithful doctor.

How does she manage baking? "Me and my stool and a cane," she replies with a broad smile.

Her crowded past surrounds her in the living room. A large gold-framed picture of a pastel Madonna and Child hangs on one wall. "It was a wedding gift."

Nearby is a small organ her doctor gave her. It was his mother's, he told her. On the walls are pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mary, Pope John Paul II. On shelves are photos of babies, little girls in First Communion white, a grandson now dead.

Lakisha and Mario decorated the small tree by the front window. When it's lit a Christmas tune plays.

An upright freezer stands next to the refrigerator in the kitchen, the last Christmas gift from her husband before he died in 1982. "It pays for itself. Otherwise the things people give you, you have to use right away," Mrs. Jenkins finds.

After his death, their good friend, Sister Stella Maris, kept in touch until her death.

"If he missed heaven," his widow says, "there isn't much need for anybody to go there." She feels the same way about the diminutive Mercy sister who cared about everyone.

She lives on Social Security, pays Lakisha's tuition out of it.

She has good friends and "the Lord is my shepherd." She doesn't want for anything. One member of the "Irish Yankee" family from Detroit still helps out. St. Joseph's Hospital sends gifts of food. And then there is "the church."

Her church gave her a birthday party on her 90th birthday last June. "Father Henry" and several others came to her home with cake and congratulations. It was the first party she'd ever had. "I waited 90 years."

"I've been lonely and I get worried," she says. "But I know my work's not done."